July 25, 2013

Procedure Update: MHA Silica-Coating

According to Aggregation and adhesion of gold nanoparticles in phosphate buffer saline, PBS and prolonged sonication actually cause aggregation in gold nanoparticle solutions: "results showed an optimized sonication time of 10 min to reach equilibrium for plain gold nanoparticles in water." Instead of using PBS to dilute all components, filtered MilliQ water will be used to dilute nanoparticles as well as MHA, as the organic solvent in solution prior to the actual silica-coating may have also been affecting observed the gold nanoparticle aggregation.